by Mick Herron
“All righty,” said Lamb. “I’ve had as much as I can stand for one lifetime. Piss off and do some work. And remember, all of us are lying in the gutter. But some of you are circling the drain.”
“Thanks.”
“But it could be worse. You could be a hotshot squad of international assassins. Then you’d really be in trouble.”
Nobody dared ask, and they all trooped out.
On the way downstairs, Shirley said, “Have you gone off reservation lately?”
“Me?” said Louisa. “No.”
“Then why would the Park be tailing you?”
“They don’t need a reason,” said Louisa. “We’re Slough House. They can do what they want with us.”
She left it until after lunch before heading into River’s room. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. His computer was on, its screen reflected in the window pane behind him: rows of columns, probably an electoral register. So much of what they did involved scrolling through the surface details of civic existence, looking for bumps that weren’t there. But River’s hands weren’t on his keyboard or his mouse. They were holding something he dropped in a drawer as she entered.
“Hey,” he said.
“You okay?”
“Just peachy.”
She perched on the corner of his desk and raised an eyebrow. “An Aston Martini?”
“It’s actually a Renault Crisis.”
“Yeah, that sounds more you.” She leaned forward, and he pushed the drawer shut. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s nothing. Tell me about this guy who was following you.”
“He was a guy,” said Louisa, “and he was following me. That’s a barrette, isn’t it?”
“A barrette’s a kind of gun, right? I haven’t got a gun, no.”
“That’s a Beretta.”
“Or a bishop’s hat? Haven’t got one of those, either.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about now,” said Louisa, “but we both know what you’re not talking about.”
River said, “I was clearing my drawers out, that’s all.”
“Yeah, ’cause you’re big on spring-cleaning. I’ve noticed that in the past. That was Sid’s barrette, wasn’t it? Okay, hair grip.”
“Why would I have—”
“Because you found it on her desk after—afterwards. Come on, River, this is me. What’s the matter? Why’s she on your mind?”
His face was set in a familiar obstinate scowl.
“Because that call you got, the one you thought was her. It could have been anyone. A wrong number, a glitch on the line. Whoever it was didn’t say anything, did they? You can’t recognise a silence.”
Though she was recognising this one. River had pushed his chair back onto its rear two legs; was leaning against the wall, eyes half-closed.
Louisa glanced towards the room’s other desk, currently vacant; its most recent former occupant a smudge on a distant hillside. And she thought about Emma Flyte, who hadn’t been a slow horse; who had, let’s face it, been better than any of them. Both more recent casualties than Sidonie Baker, but fresh wounds make old scars itch. It didn’t take a genius to work out why River Cartwright was turning Sid’s barrette over in his hands; the hairslide that was all the Park’s removal men had left of her presence.
She said, “I’m not a therapist, God knows, but—”
“She’s alive.”
“I know you want to think that. I do too. But until she actually turns up—”
“No, seriously.” He let the chair fall back onto all four legs, and laid his hands flat on the desk. “She has done. Turned up. Sid’s alive.”
Louisa stared, but it didn’t take her long. He meant every word, she could see that.
“You—really? Jesus, River! Really?”
He glanced ceilingwards, and shook his head. “Not here.” And then he was on his feet, heading for the door. His coat hung on a hook, and he scooped it free in passing.
She followed him a moment later, barely caring that Lamb might hear them, or that leaving Slough House without his permission was a hanging offence.
They were out in the yard a minute later; in the pub over the road shortly after that.
Her hair was different. Maybe that’s what death does to you. It was still mostly red but now punkishly short, with a white stripe across her left temple where the bullet had passed, leaving in its wake a shallow channel, which gave her the appearance of having been imperfectly sculpted. Her dusting of freckles had faded and her skin seemed whiter, though that might have been the effect of dim lighting. She was skinnier too, her upper body swamped by a hoodie, whose American University brand name disappeared inside its own folds. Once she’d been all clean lines and fresh air; now that same thought conjured up an image of her hung out with the washing. But she was still Sid. She had Sid’s eyes and Sid’s mouth, so she was still Sid; back from joe country, and in his grandfather’s house. How had that happened?
And what did he say?
He said, “Jesus. Sid.”
Two resurrections.
She watched as he entered, shutting the door. It seemed necessary to keep this encounter within a closed space; to seal off the emptiness outside. It was just the pair of them in a familiar room, in which nothing had changed, bar everything.
“Hello, River.”
Her voice was the same too, if a notch quieter. And there was something considered about the delivery; as if Sid were playing off-book for the first time, not entirely comfortable with her lines yet. “I heard you coming in. I knew it was you.”
The chair she sat in was the O.B.’s. If River squinted, he could make out the smooth patches on its arms, the indentations of its upholstery, all of it adding up to the faded shape of his grandfather. His own chair, the one he’d spent so many evenings in, listening to the old man conjure stories out of memory, hadn’t yet shaped itself to him. Favourite chairs were like your future; the form they would eventually take depended on your input, your commitment. River hadn’t sat in his for a while. There’d been no need to, since his grandfather passed.
He crossed the room, crouched next to her. “Sid? It’s really you, right?”
“It’s really me.”
He wanted to touch her, to make sure. Weird kind of hallucination this would be, one he’d driven miles to encounter at a neighbour’s invitation, but still: he wanted to know her flesh was still flesh. So he reached a hand out and she took it. Her hand felt curiously warm.
“You’re alive.”
“Of course I am.”
As if the alternative were out of the question, though the last time he’d seen her she’d been prone on a pavement, a pool of blood blotting out her horizons. His memory of what followed was mostly of a loud journey through zombie-strewn streets, sirens jangling. Head wounds bleed. Head wounds bleed bad. He’d clung to that fact: that head wounds bleed bad. That Sid Baker was bleeding from the head didn’t necessarily mean anything critical had happened. Could be a graze. So why had she looked so dead?
“And you’re here . . . Why didn’t you let me know?”
“I was going to. I knew you’d come, though. Sooner or later. I mean . . .” She glanced around the room. “This.”
The room, she meant; its intact status in an empty house. You didn’t clear a building, leaving just one small corner of it furnished.
“What is it, a shrine? Your grandfather died, didn’t he. And this is preserving his memory?”
“Not exactly. I mean, yes, in a way, but . . . It doesn’t matter. What are you doing here? All this time. Why didn’t you let me know?”
“I called you.”
He remembered. The phone had rung in his office, and nobody spoke when he picked up: he’d been sure it was Sid, though he didn’t believe in any of that woo-woo nonsense. There must have been
something in the quality of her breath. The short time they’d known each other, they’d spent most of it in that office, not talking. He’d grown used to her silent presence. Had known what it was like to hear her not speak.
“But I didn’t know what to say.”
“. . . That you were alive?”
“But you must have known that. Didn’t you know that?”
He said, “They told us you were dead.”
“Oh . . .”
She’d disappeared from the hospital; vanished as if she’d never been there. That, in fact, was the official truth: she had never been there. And when River had tried to find out what had happened, he’d been closed down. Sidonie Baker was dead: that was all he needed to know. Sid Baker was dead, and River Cartwright was Slough House, which meant he should fuck off back to his desk and stop asking questions.
The surface she’d slid under had been a murky one, and Diana Taverner had been responsible for much of the dirt. So naturally, it wasn’t a pool she wanted anyone stirring a stick in.
The news that she’d been dead didn’t appear to startle Sid. But then, her face was less lively now. In her long absence, she’d acquired a degree of stillness. There must have been a lot of waiting involved, and she’d clearly grown used to it.
“You could have . . .”
But it wasn’t a thought worth finishing. She could have let him know, could have been in touch. But what did River know about being vanished? At least in Slough House he could open a window if he felt like it, and scream his frustration to the street below. Nobody would pay attention, but he could do that. Presumably Sid’s situation had been different.
“I wasn’t well for a long time.” She raised a hand to the white flash in her hair. “I lost a couple of years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
It had been, or that was the way River remembered it. A confused moment on a rainy street, and a single gunshot. A number of people had been involved, and the rest of them were all dead too.
“How did you find me? The house, I mean? How did you know to come here?”
“It was in your file. I read your file.”
Of course she had.
Because while Sid had been a slow horse, she’d also been something else; had been put in Slough House to keep an eye on him, River Cartwright. This would have been Taverner’s work, but he never did hear the exact details, because Sid had been shot minutes after she’d confessed this to him.
She said, “I lost a lot of things.”
Well, moving hospital to hospital, he could see that some of her stuff might have gone astray.
“But I remembered you.”
He wasn’t sure he made any response to that. Or that any was required.
She said, “Once I was better, they put me in Cumbria. Have you been there?”
He either had or hadn’t, he was sure one of the two was true, and after a moment, he recalled which. “Once. Long time ago.”
On a short holiday with Rose. He didn’t know where the O.B. had been. Supposedly retired, there were still gaps in his family life. River recollected that much.
“It’s beautiful. Hills and lakes and meadows. There’s a farmhouse there, it’s run like a holiday home . . .”
But would be a Service resource, thought River. There were still one or two. You could cut back here and cut back there, bow to the demands of an age of austerity, but you had to look after your joes when they’d been shot in the head. If only to ensure that future recruitment didn’t get difficult.
“And you’re better now? You’re fully recovered?”
“I get headaches. But I’m mostly okay.”
But something had been subtracted, he was sure of that. There was a vitality missing. But how could it be otherwise? She’d been dead. Even with the demonstrable evidence in front of him that this wasn’t so, it was a difficult piece of knowledge to cast away. It was as if his past had just been rewritten. This might be what religion felt like; a thunderball, a stroke.
“So you knew where I lived,” he said. “Where I used to live. But what made you come here? Why now?”
“I needed somewhere to hide.”
That was easy to believe. She looked like she might bolt somewhere at any moment, and cover herself with leaves.
He was still holding her hand. They’d never had this much contact back when they’d shared an office.
“Here’s good then,” he said. “You’re safe here.” Which wasn’t necessarily true, but felt like the right thing to say regardless.
“Maybe for the moment.”
“What are you hiding from?”
She said, “Someone’s trying to kill me.”
This seemed a suitably dramatic moment at which to pause the narrative.
The pub across the road from Slough House felt like a continuation of their worklives: more a chore than a break. The coffee was poured from a jug, but tasted like instant. River could have done with an actual drink, but that would have been a mistake: he’d be back on the road as soon as he could, behind the wheel, back to Tonbridge. Wouldn’t have left her last night, except she insisted. Keep everything normal. Don’t draw attention.
“And you haven’t told Lamb?” Louisa said.
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s going to find out anyway.”
“Sid’s frightened. She asked me not to tell anyone, so that’s what I’m doing.”
“Except for me.”
“Well, yes. Except you.”
“Thanks. I think. Who’s trying to kill her?”
“She doesn’t know. She just knew she was being watched.”
Louisa said, “Lot of that about.”
“How do you mean?”
“What do you mean, how do I mean? I was tailed last night? Remember?”
“Yeah, sorry, right. No, I mean yeah, but what’s the connection?”
“I didn’t mean there was a connection, I just . . . oh, never mind. So she felt she was being watched. Doesn’t she have a handler or something? They didn’t just put her out to pasture, did they? Recovering from head trauma?”
After the farmhouse, after the residential care, Sid had been moved to a cottage on a newbuild estate not far from Kendal. She’d been there more than a year, relearning the steps required to live a life. The phrase had remained with River: he pictured her with L-plates on, buying groceries, feeding plastic into an ATM. Opening brown envelopes which explained her civic duties: council tax, voter registration, jury service.
“She had a handler, or a milkman anyway,” he said. “Twice a week, she’d turn up and check everything was okay. That Sid was managing.”
Milkmen were what retired spooks got; and also those gunned down in the field, it seemed.
“And this milkman, who’s a she you say, making her a milkwoman, thanks—what did she make of it?”
“Don’t know,” said River. He tried some coffee: dreadful. “I haven’t actually put thumbscrews to her yet. Sid. Haven’t choked every last detail out of her.”
Louisa said, “I hate to ask this. But is she, you know—okay?”
“In what sense?”
“Well, most of them.” River was looking obstinate again, but she ploughed on regardless. “Look, she was shot in the head. I get it she’s still alive, and you told me about the hair thing, the white stripe. But how’s she looking otherwise? Still a Burne-Jones, or is she more Picasso now?”
“She hasn’t lost her looks,” said River. “She’s more fragile looking.”
“And how about mentally?”
“Pretty spacey. Drifts off while she’s talking. But look, I hadn’t seen her in however long it’s been. Years. Hard to tell what’s awkwardness and what’s . . . permanent.”
“No it isn’t,” said Louisa. �
��Sid was bright, Sid was witty, she was never at a loss for words that I remember. Which means the Sid you’ve been talking to’s not fully come back from her wound.” She picked up her coffee cup, came to her senses and put it down again. “There’s a lot of space between thinking someone’s watching you and thinking they want you dead. The mysterious watchers might be a symptom, for all we know. Paranoia.”
“Says the woman who was tailed into a sportswear shop last night.”
“Oh, that happened. His phone pinged, remember?”
“I believe her.”
“Okay.”
“Something happened to send her on the run.”
“Sure. But let’s not forget she’s not the only one who got hurt when she was shot. You’ve been feeling guilty ever since.”
Tell him about it. The memory was seared on his mind: the rain, and the blood gathering on the pavement. And then the night-ride to the hospital, and the slamming doors, and the body on the trolley being wheeled away. He’d ended up locked in a cupboard, guarded by one of the Dogs, until Lamb had come to rescue him.
“And that makes you more inclined to believe her.”
“I believe her because she’s Sid.”
“Same difference. Look, you want my advice? Because I’m giving it anyway. Tell Lamb. Hate to say it, but. Either Sid’s in danger, in which case she’s better off him knowing, or she’s not, in which case people need to know anyway. So they can set about making her better.”
“What if he knows already?”
“. . . That she’s at your grandfather’s house?”
“That she’s still alive.”
“It’s possible,” said Louisa. “He knows all sorts of things he shouldn’t. But either way, he’s Lamb. And she’s his joe, when you get down to it.”
“That doesn’t always help, does it?” River said, and they both thought briefly of the empty desk in his office.
“We should get back,” said Louisa, rising to her feet. Then, buttoning her coat, said, “Slough House, by the way.”
“. . . What?”
“That’s the connection between Sid and me. Slough House.”
River just grunted.
At lunchtime, on her way out, Catherine Standish heard Jackson Lamb torturing a warthog in his room. Best thing would be to keep walking: down the stairs, through the door which jammed rain or shine, then through the alley and onto Aldersgate Street, whose traffic-choked mundanity felt a spring meadow after a morning in Slough House. But something made her peer into Lamb’s office, to check no actual animals were being harmed, and she interrupted him mid-snore. His office, as always, seemed subtly different when he was its only occupant, as if enfolding him in a mouldy embrace, though the familiar medley of odours—stale alcohol, cigarettes, sweat—remained present and true. Lamb’s eyes opened before she’d finished these thoughts. “What?”